Writing on the Walls
by ShadowedSoulSpirit
Summary: Kaminari Denki is a pro hero and has finally harnessed his powerful quirk. Chargebolt is in the same league as heroes like Ground Zero, Shoto, and Deku. But what if all that changes when complications from his quirk threaten to end his hero career for good? Warnings Inside.


**Writing On the Walls**

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 **A BNHA oneshot?**

 **Summary: Kaminari Denki is a pro hero and has finally harnessed his powerful quirk. Chargebolt is in the same league as heroes like Ground Zero, Shoto, and Deku. But what if all that changes when complications from his quirk threaten to end his hero career for good.**

 **Warning: SeroxKaminari, established relationships.**

* * *

 _Tik tok. Tik tok._

The noise thrummed inside his head, bled into his dreams. _Tik tok_ clicked to its own tune. It wasn't hindered by the mechanisms of a clock anymore.

" _DENKI!"_

There were the sounds of scraping, metal catching on a cement sidewalk. Fists struck the ground in frustration, and there was cursing, lots of cursing, among the _tik toks_ and the screams. Kaminari Denki couldn't decipher any of it though. All he heard was the clock.

 _Tik tok._

His body synchronized to the beat. He felt a pulsation in his chest at every noise, a sudden jerk of his limbs. For a moment, he could wind the world into a quilt he could see. In the next, it dissolved into threads.

A warm hand pressed to his face. He enjoyed the feeling. It was the same thing Sero did before they went to bed at night.

Then it jerked away—no—Denki jerked away, his body reacting on the _tik_ like he himself was the clock. The hand came back, but again, his body seized, and his limbs reacted to an entity he couldn't comprehend. All he knew was his chest ached. It ached _a lot._

 _Heart rate… charging… clear!_

And Denki jolted awake right away.

He sucked in a hard breath to fill his screaming lungs. It felt like he was choking, and he clutched the blankets like they were hands. A nurse almost hit him in the face with a balloon-like object, and she squeezed it over his head. The worried lines on the doctor's forehead faded when Kaminari saw Sero's horrified expression through the window on the door.

"Hanta?" He tried to ask, but his vocal cords constricted. He swallowed hard and prodded the tube in his mouth with his tongue lightly.

"Hello Chargebolt," the doctor greeted, and Kaminari winced as he shined a light in his eyes. "Glad to have you back. You gave us quite a scare."

Kaminari looked around the room and tried to reach for the tube—only, he couldn't feel if he was moving his arms at all. He shook his bangs out of his eyes and tried to see both limbs. Both arms were still there, and from the mounds at the end of the bed, both legs, too. Even though he couldn't count his fingers, he relaxed. The nurse unhooked the balloon, and instead hooked the end of the tube to what looked like a vacuum hose. A machine forced him to take a breath.

 _Tik tok._

After an hour, the doctor proposed to extubate him from the breathing machine. Feeling was slowly regenerating in his limbs, but the nurse still had to prop him up. They counted to three and pulled the tube free, and Kaminari couldn't stop hacking and coughing while his lungs screamed. He was still trying to correct the burning in his lungs when they let Hanta in.

"Denki," Sero rushed over and slid onto his bed, grabbing one of his hands tightly and pushing his hair out of his face with the other. The wedding ring clacked against this cheekbone. "Denki… oh God… I'm glad you're alive."

Talking felt like he was moving a wet towel instead of moving his tongue, but he tried anyway. "What… happened…?"

Sero's face pinched from relief to worry in an instant. "We were fighting villains, you remember?"

Kaminari slowly nodded. The memory was faint, but if he prodded it, some of the colors came back. Deku was in America on a public relations trip. Ground Zero was stomping around in Hokkaido. He and a few other pros were tasked with defending Musutafu, and as usual, villains never failed to appear.

But this time was different. He didn't understand why.

"You took out a lot of the villains. You were doing amazing Denki…" Hanta brushed a thumb over his cheek. "And then that happened…"

"That…?" Kaminari wracked his brain, but that memory remained elusive. Everything ended at _Indiscriminate Shock: 1,000,000 volts!_ He didn't go stupid; he had trained too hard in high school to do that anymore. But it was like he was driving with both hands on the wheel when suddenly—

When suddenly he took both hands off.

"I don't… remember…"

Sero squeezed his hand reassuringly, but not an ounce of it reached his stressed face.

"You collapsed. After you used your electricity. Your heart stopped."

 _Tik tok._

He remembered the throb in his chest, the pain. He remembered soaring in the air before he crashed down again. He remembered breathing but nothing entering his lungs, the feeling of drowning on nothing.

The heart monitor spiked as a warning, and Sero eased him to lay down in bed again. Denki didn't want to remember, to think anymore.

He wished he had just gone stupid.

 _Tik tok._

Occasionally, there was a hiccup in his heartbeat at the _tok._ Every once in a while, he could feel it. Sometimes it was a sharp throb. Sometimes, it was a sharp inhale that felt like it contained no oxygen. Everything was sharp, even the clapping in his ears when a beat skipped, like someone rubbing their nails down a chalkboard.

He tried to ignore the feeling and go back to life. A month passed, then two. Deku returned from America, and crime was on the downward slope. By month three, Chargebolt was back on the headlines. One time and for all but five minutes, his popularity with his fans put him .03% ahead of Ground Zero. Almost the second after he got the notification, Bakugo busted the speakers out of his phone from his screams. Kaminari couldn't stop laughing about it all day, and for once, he forgot all about his heart.

And then came month four. A villain rammed him into a wall. He couldn't catch his breath.

Month six: he tried to taze a robber. For two minutes, it felt like the air was just cotton, and he was swallowing nothing but dust and smoke.

Month seven arrived, and he heard the clock again. It took him twenty minutes to get up off the sidewalk. He pretended it wasn't happening, though. He was just in his twenties. He was finally making a name for himself. He harnessed the quirk that brought him so much grief. Nothing was wrong.

And then month eight, Bakugo was almost killed by a villain.

Kaminari ran into number two hero on his patrol route and decided to pester him all the way home. Kaminari enjoyed catching up with one of his best friends in high school before Bakugo shoved a hand in his face and pushed him back. Before he could ask him why, a villain leaped from the shadows and tackled Bakugo.

When Bakugo's back hit the ground, Kaminari heard a loud crack. The villain could manipulate his body weight, and in a moment, almost killed Ground Zero.

"Bakugo!" Kaminari nailed the villain with a pointer and sent all his electricity to the one point.

Bakugo grunted when the weight shifted on his body, but with the villain dazed and his high weight density receding, the pro managed to shove him off.

"You'll regret attacking my friend!" the Stun Gun hero said.

Instead of focusing on the pointer, Kaminari generated more electricity from his feet. He had better accuracy now and avoided hitting Bakugo when he unleashed another _Indiscriminate Shock._

 _Tik tok._

Kaminari felt a harsh throb in his chest. He had to bend over his knees and press a palm to his chest. He could feel his heart rattling inside the cage of his ribs. It felt like his lungs were rung out like a towel, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't swallow. He'd inhale—but inhale nothing. His heart was drumming in his ears, cymbals crashing and clanging. He couldn't see Bakugo, couldn't hear him if he was talking anymore. He tried to count to three and blow out like he was extubated, but he was blowing nothing out.

His heart sounded like it was going to burst.

 _Tik tok._

Kaminari Denki hit the ground at the _tok._

Even on the ground, the world kept spinning. Colors dissolved into a twirling kaleidoscope.

And then there was black.

 _Tik tok._

Followed by a shock.

He jerked in the bed, but it was a familiar place with familiar faces.

Kaminari had a diagnosis this time. _Arrhythmia. A complication with his quirk._ The doctor explained to him that, without an internal defibrillator, his electricity would cause his heart to lose rhythm again without another shock to get it back into a normal pattern, like restoring the _tik tok_ back to a clock. Without an internal defibrillator, Kaminari Denki would die.

Sero held his hand when he heard the news, but Denki didn't process any of it. He was still alive.

But Chargebolt was already dead.

 _Tik tok._

The sound of the clock struck him to the core. The writing was clearly painted across the walls. Sero couldn't catch him fast enough before he broke down into tears.

Who's heard of a hero with a heart defect anyway?

That's the thing. No one has.

Because they simply don't exist.

 _Chargebolt: Retirement for the Young Hero?_

Bakugo Katsuki shredded the newspaper up, but it did little to shred the guilt into the same tiny slivers. Nothing would ever be the same again.

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 **Just an idea of the consequences of using his quirk. Would you like to know how Denki would handle his new life with his arrhythmia? Or how other heroes would develop complications from their quirk?**

 **Soul Spirit**


End file.
